A Wonderful Creation: A Mirror Image Interpretation of Digital Identities
Over the past decade, having and maintaining a digital identity has grown increasingly important for not only building the individual’s social interactions, but the user’s self perception. With the rise in importance, the curation of images that align with a desired aesthetic or lifestyle is captured in the concept of “insta worthy.”
This concept, first applied to images posted on Instagram, has been expanded to a wider array of photographs like landscapes, coffee, and interior decor, opening new ways for users to create an insta worthy identity. Psychologist Jacques Lacan theorized that in early psychological development humans develop a sense of being apart from the world around them, which he termed as “The Mirror Stage.” With this psychological theory as a lens to understand digital identities, the creation of an identity is illusionary and an imagined construct that uses surrounding people as forms to illustrate their own identities.
Lacan’s mirror stage aims to capture the point when an infant is able to realize itself as separate from the world around them as if they look in the mirror for the first time and see their body. At this stage, the infant is able to anticipate its future self by projecting itself on the people around him or her. It is this projection that connects Lacan’s theory to digital identity. In both cases, the subject attains a sense of separation from the world while projecting their image onto other people. For the infant, the projection is anticipatory or one to be realized in the future; for social media users, the projection is an ideal version of themselves. The digital identity is separate from the person’s reality and is shaped by celebrities or influencers who have attained some part of their ideal.
Digital accounts are built to present and create an identity; each image, text, or video is selected based on its value to be “insta worthy” and to assist the user in portraying the ideal image of themselves, whether or not the user does so consciously. Furthermore their feed, which generally consists of a mix of friends, celebrities, influencers, and consumer product pages, provides users with a wealth of ideals to aspire to. On social media, the primary platform for digital identities, everything is staged to curate an image that the individual thinks the world desires. As Ismail Erim Gülaçti writes in his study of photography; “The fact that we pose conscientiously, putting on our best smile and trying to look pleased during the shooting and then choose the best photographs for editing on the phone or on the computer and delete the undesirable ones shows all this interplay of the aspects that constitute the construction of identity through photography”.
What continues the individual’s addiction to their digital identity is the desire to achieve an imagined standard of beauty, wealth, or popularity. Today, many people’s digital identity is linked to their social one, “most notably, Millennials have spent their entire lives with digital media. Because they and their social media ‘friends’ have grown together online, social comparison may produce less stark and shocking contrast between them and their peers compared to older adults” as Hardy and Castonguay wrote in their 2016 study on social media’s effect on well being. Thus, the inner world, “the one that I think I am,” and the outer, “the one I want others to think I am”, is disjointed and it is this disconnect that indicates the onset of the mirror stage. The imaginary conception of the self leads to a misplacement of identity, placing outside the subject’s body which leads to imitation and critical judgment of the projected identity.
Lacan’s infant’s anticipatory projection of itself onto other people allows it to see something to aspire to and simultaneously be able to study the projection as separate parts, not the whole body. In the mirror stage, for the infant, “the self is constituted through anticipation of what it will become, and then an anticipatory model is used for gauging what was before… the anticipatory totalized body image produces the retroactive phantasy of the body in bits and pieces” (my emphasis).
In the context of social media, the projection and judgment of the person’s “bits and pieces” and others is what fuels the internet’s ‘industry of desire.’ The industry of desire refers to the business models of social media sites as well as the brands, individuals, and companies that make a profit by monetizing users’ interests. The conception of the influencer is based on the desires that they audience feel that the person signifies. Their feeds are expertly stylized that present the curated perfect life. For the public, this desire to attain the influencer’s fame, wealth, or success is seen in their chosen aesthetic. This is comparable to the many women who have taken self-objectification as empowering, while choosing to ignore its incredible profitability it has for the site and whatever brand they are wearing. This happens on the celebrity level to high school girls posing on the beach and the opportunity to get the likes from friends and strangers further validates the projected identity’s existence.
For each bit and piece of both the digital identity and the real person, there is an image, aesthetic, or lifestyle that is a model for or inspiration of the select bit. In the study of images, Gülaçti asserts that “the growing ease of tweaking and manipulating in digital photographs has led to individuals to feel powerful in construction and presenting their digital identities”. The tweaked images of the individual give people a sense of control over their online appearances to flatter them and align their lifestyle, physical features, or dress after an ideal.
Furthermore, when researching how to gain popularity on social media sites, users are told: “you have to share well-thought outposts with a cohesive visual style and steer clear from posting random photos…. Random and disjointed posts are confusing and may cause you to lose followers”. Thus, any aspiration to reveal a less flattering, but possibly more authentic, digital identity is incompatible with the social network’s structure.
Many scholars have studied and critiqued the work that users do in their feigning for attention online. The labor that builds and maintains a digital identity, parallels the psychological patterns that Lacan identified in the mirror effect. Like a child imitating a person that is deemed desired, the work of a digital identity uses other’s images as goals to aspire to.
With the constant reevaluation of a person’s image, much like a mirror, a digital identity is used to paint a desirable picture. Gülaçti explains, “Photographs are instruments that call us to contemplate our own past, current and future selves, continuously evaluating our images …we tend to model our image to match the ideal collection of these past, current and future selves” and the “unnecessary or undesired parts were removed or retouched” to create an enhanced image. The retouching of an image is like the infant’s mission to totalize and master the body that they perceive as inadequate.
Since digital identities are modeled to match an ideal, there is a constant dissatisfaction with the present image of reality that does not align with the image on the screen. What continues the individual’s addiction to their digital identity is the desire to achieve an imagined standard of beauty. This takes a psychological toll on the individual because of the pressure for perfection. Like Lacan’s infant’s rejection of itself in favor of the mirrored reflection, on social media the creation reflected self produces increased dissatisfaction with reality. In the mirror stage, the person works “from insufficiency to anticipation” by plotting the “succession of phantasies which go from an image of the body in bits and pieces” to a fully realized form. What is particularly important about the dissatisfaction of the mirror stage is that it is always retroactive and the ideal is anticipatory — meaning that the ideal is always one step ahead of the present moment. This creates a cycle, in which the dissatisfaction in one area, once compensated by creating a more flattering digital identity, is replaced by another dissatisfaction of another bit.
Many understand this part of the mirror stage as a push out of the joys of reality and into a state of discussion or anxiousness. The misalignment in reality and the virtual, can produce a feeling of dissolution, loss, and disconnect from the physical world. This can align with the actual age difference of users. This has been studied by Bruce Hardy and Jessica Castonguay; they found that for “late adults search to define personal values, beliefs, and goals,” and since digital identities are limited in carrying these important development, the “failure to establish a sense of identity within society leads to role confusion”.
However, the social connections that occur virtually, are made on the curated and idealized digital projection of all the parties involved. There is very little, if any, interior life that is able to live on social networking sites because of the demand and commitment to master the bits and pieces of a digital identity. The individual’s autonomy begins to slip away as their social connections grow, the perfect aesthetic is being archived, and they find the power of the digital identity to hide what is vulnerable or ugly.
As mentioned previously, the increased importance of digital presence and image of an individual’s perception of their outward appearance, leaves an inevitable disappointment in finding less than ideal external and internal states. Today, the social media companies have yet to fully unlock the inner emotions, values, thoughts, or identity of its users nor the ability for its users to create a more complex, emotional, and realistic version of themselves. However, the desire industry gives a powerful preview of how the inner thoughts and feelings of a person can be transformed into a profitable commodity. What is in the interior can never truly be presented not only because of its complexity and variance, but a digital identity’s prerequisite to be aesthetically appealing. Instead, the threat of internal exposure may lead to even greater detrimental effects then the ones that come from the internet’s cycle of comparison and feigned betterment of physical features that are hidden, suppressed, or hated.
In conclusion, through studying digital identity through Lacan’s mirror stage, it is clear that the formation and maintenance of a digital identity, can lead to a dissociation between the real and the virtual. Like the infant’s reflection, a user sees themselves as separate parts whether on the body or in lifestyle that can be tweaked, hidden, emphasized to create a more desirable identity. The industry of desire and the constant work to achieve an ideal creates a cycle of dissatisfaction with both the virtual and real self. By understanding the digital identity as a mirror in Lacan’s theory we see that digital identities allow the user to create an illusionary sense of self with the imitated bits and pieces taken from other user’s aesthetic lives in an effort to create an ideal identity. Thus, when looking at digital identities and social media accounts we must seek to understand the person as a whole, not fragmented parts to be borrowed and subtracted from, but see oneself and others as a desirable human form.